He deliberately held out his wrist for the bird to take flight, and caught it again at the moment it spread its wings. She was gazing past the pink flowers, past the railway cottage where they lived, along the road to the village. Her hair fell down her back in a wave of sunlight, and her long bare legs repeated the angles of the frangipani stems, bare, shining-brown stems among patterns of pale blossoms. His eyes travelled homewards along this road until he saw his granddaughter swinging on the gate underneath a frangipani tree. Trees marked the course of the valley a stream of rich green grass the road. In folds and hollows of sunlight and shade, the dark red soil, which was broken into great dusty clods, stretched wide to a tall horizon. Content, he rested the bird lightly on his chest, and leaned against a tree, gazing out beyond the dovecote into the landscape of a late afternoon. 'Pretty, pretty, pretty,' he said, as he grasped the bird and drew it down, feeling the cold coral claws tighten around his finger. His ears were lulled by their crooning, his hands stretched up towards his favourite, a homing pigeon, a young plump-bodied bird which stood still when it saw him and cocked a shrewd bright eye. The sunlight broke on their grey breasts into small rainbows. Flight by Doris Lessing Above the old man's head was the dovecote, a tall wirenetted shelf on stilts, full of strutting, preening birds.
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March 2023
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